April 2010 Article: ”Critical Steps for Continuing Advancement of Satellite Rainfall Applications for Surface Hydrology in the Nile River Basin, “ Mekonnen Gebremichael, Emmanouil N. Anagnostou, and Menberu M. Bitew. (Highlights courtesy of Associate Editor Faisal Hossain)
As part of the Featured Series, ‘Satellites and Transboundary Water’, we have an important contribution on the advancement of satellite rainfall remote sensing for hydrologic modeling in transboundary basin of the Nile river. Because satellites only offer an indirect measurement (an estimate), validation against ground information is very critical before the actual use can continue to infer hydrologic behavior of an ungauged or sparsely gauged river basin. The authors provide an insightful look into this aspect and then go on to provide a systematic approach to validation of satellite rainfall products. Most ground information on rainfall are point-based and which raises the age-old question of ‘how many gauges are acceptable within a satellite gridbox to perform a robust validation?’ Since rainfall is a highly intermittent process with strong spatial and temporal gradients, this question has been difficult to resolve. Using a highly dense gauge network setup by the authors in the highlands of Ethiopia, the problematic issues of validation and ways to overcome them are clearly laid out with hands-on examples. We believe this work is a seminal step forward in promoting the use of satellite rainfall data in transboundary rivers around the world where ground instrumentation is often sparse or absent.
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Tags: satellites